1. Action Centered Design By Peter Denning & Pamela Dargan

2. Peter Denning - Several prominent teaching and research posts. - President of the ACM - Spearheaded National Computing Curriculum Taskforce (1989) – Denning Report - Presently, Chairman of the Computer Science Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California Publications  Working Sets and Virtual Memory  Great Principles of Computing  Professions and Futures  Software Engineering, Architecture, and Quality  Workflow and Commerce

3. Pamela Dargan - MITRE Corporation, - Experienced Software designer belonging to MITRE

4. Problem Statement How successful software designers had managed to create software that users found usable and well suited to their needs

5. Interesting Statistics In UseNever deliveredDelivered but not used 50% 25% 2% Fund Allocation Software US Govt. Accounting Office Review : Dept of Defense

6. Action – Centered Design A broader interpretation of design that is based on observing the repetitive actions of people in a domain and connecting those action- processes to supportive software technologies

7. Approaches to Software Design Primary Meaning of Design : “ To make or conceive a plan” There are two principal approaches to it :  Product Centered Design (Software Engineering) :  Dated to 1960  “Based on the traditions of engineering, where design is seen as a formal process of defining specifications and deriving a system from them”.  Human Centered Design  Dated to 1980  “Designers immerse themselves in the everyday routines and concerns of the customers”

8. Product Centered Design (Software Engineering) : The engineering design process operates on 3 assumptions: 1. The result of the design is a product (artifact, machine, or system). 2. The product is derived from specifications given by the customer; in principle, with enough knowledge and computing power, this derivation could be mechanized. 3. Once the customer and designer have agreed on the specifications, there is little need for contact between them until delivery.

9. Human Centered Design Based on understanding the domain of work in which the people are engaged, how they interact Computers, and programming computers to do exactly the same. The engineering design process operates on 3 assumptions: 1. The result of the design is a satisfied customer. 2. The process of design is a collaboration between designers and customers; it evolves and adapts to their changing concerns, and it produces a specification as an important byproduct. 3. The customer and designer are in constant communication during the entire process.

10. Donald Norman : Product-Centered design : Focus on the machine and its efficiency, expecting humans to adapt. Human centered design : Leaves to humans the actions that humans do well such as understanding, empathizing, perceiving etc. and leaves to machines what humans do not do well, such as performing repetitive actions without error, searching large data sets, accurate calculations.

11. Action-Centered Design “ Software designers must be trained to be skilled observers of the domain of action in which a particular community of people engage, so that the designers can produce software that the designers can produce software that assists people in performing those actions more effectively”

12. Pattern Mapping as a basis for a Discipline of Design The maps would provide ways 1. To convey the patterns of action of the domain in which the software will be used, in terms of its basic distinctions, repetitive processes, standards of assessment, strategies, tools, breakdowns, and driving concerns 2. To connect the linguistic structure of the domain to the software structures that will support the patterns, and to guide software engineers in implementing those structures 3. To provide a basis for measuring the effectiveness of the implemented system in practice

13. The basic patterns that these maps should cover are A set of linguistic distinctions (verbs, nouns, jargon, etc) A set of speech acts by which domain participants declare and report states of affairs. A set of standard practices (recurrent actions, organizational processes, roles, standards of assessment) in which members of the domain engage. A set of ready-to-hand tools and equipment that people use to perform Actions. A set of breakdowns, which are interruptions of standard practices and progress caused by tools breaking, people failing to complete agreements, external circumstances, etc. A set of ongoing concerns of the people in the domain -- common missions, interests, and fears.

14. Summary  Building this framework in which software will be used,  Representing it as a pattern language in a standard notation &  Coordinating the work of builders is the central activity of a software architect. Practice of these skills is Action-Centered Design